Leave, Voluntarily, or be Expelled

 "When people come here [to Canada], in many of their visa documents, they undertake to leave. The vast majority leave voluntarily, and that's what's expected."

"In the vast majority of cases, those people that have come here temporarily and do not have the right to stay, in fact leave."

"We do recognize the need to pause population growth and return it to pre-pandemic levels."

"[Caps on international students had already begun to reduce rental prices in] high demand [areas like Toronto and Vancouver]."

"There are an increasing number of students making asylum claims, I think with very little hope. Whether you like it or not they are entitled to due process in this country. I don’t think you would purport to deny it to them."

Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Miller 

Source: Unsplash

 

Canada's population level has sky-rocketed in the last few years, thanks mostly to the immigration/refugee-intake/migrant issues and foreign student visas handed out with gay abandon, that Canadian universities have become dependent on for their high tuition fees. The Liberal government has insisted that Canada's low birth rate, similar to most developed countries of the world, is failing to provide a needed workforce, resulting in labour scarcity that accelerated immigration supposedly solves.

In the process of accelerating the rise of the Canadian population, an already inadequate and strained health system has stumbled badly, and housing and accommodation prices across Canada have reached sky-high scarcity and expense. Add to that the presence of so many foreign students, able to work while fulfilling their academic obligations has meant that jobs customarily taken by Canadian students are now in short supply. And then there is the issue that a student visa enables entry to Canada while some visa-holders fail to use them as intended.

The millions of foreign nationals in Canada, insisted the Immigration Minister in assurances to a House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration would, on the expiration of their visas, be "expected to leave" voluntarily. This, while Statistics Canada has confirmed that three million temporary immigrants are now living in Canada. Any of the 4.9 million visa-holders, Mr. Miller repeated, without a visa renewal will be "expected to leave".

Evidently those visa-holders have different expectations. Although the Minister claims the Canada Border Services Agency has the legal right to "remove people", members of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC), a group based in Toronto advocating for "permanent resident status for all", thinks otherwise. As a representative of the group, blocking Miller's exit stated: "Mr. Miller, we are the people you are trying to kick out of the country We are human beings and we are not taps to be turned on and off".

A video by MWAC captured the encounter with the minister pushing through the group: "Callous Liberal Immigration Minister ... Ploughs Through Crowds of Migrants He's Deporting", an accompanying MWAC caption read. The steepest rates of immigration intake in Canadian history has taken place over the last three years of the current Trudeau Liberal government. The population of Canada in 2021 was 38.2 million. A more recent estimate gives that number at 41.3 million.

Temporary immigration represents a disproportionate number of that intake. Statistics Canada's most recent estimate was three million non-permanent residents; 766,000 of that total are foreign students. The convention has always been that entering Canada on a temporary basis tended to be a reliable initial step to obtaining permanent residency and finally, citizenship. About one-third of those who enter Canada on a work permit, according to Statistics Canada, become permanent residents within five years.

 

Public dissatisfaction with a groaning, overworked universal medical system, and the inability for prospective new home buyers to match current home and apartment prices finally persuaded the government to cut back on its expansive immigration numbers, convincing it finally to reduce intake targets. The result of which would be the expectation that large numbers of temporary visa holders will leave the country, as contracted for. 

The Immigration Minister months earlier spoke of an "alarming" trend of foreign students at the expiry of their student visas, given to claiming refugee status. The current backlogs in refugee processing means that even unfounded asylum claims result in an additional two years in Canada until such time as the case can be reviewed. "There's some opportunism that's being used and exploited there", Miller admitted. But it is a situation engineered by his government, however inadvertently, by bad decisions.

The Canada Border Services Agency, tasked with removing people overstaying their visas would find their capacity to do just that overwhelmed should only a relatively small number of migrants refuse to "voluntarily" leave. The CBSA performed 20,180 removals in 2022-2023. In the first eight months of 2024, 119,835 refugee claims, including 12,915 from study permit holders were received by Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

"[Trudeau’s] own published documents show there are 4.9 million people here temporarily that are supposed to leave by Dec. 31 of next year."

"We asked what the plan was to track their departure and [on Monday Trudeau’s] immigration minister said 'We’re just going to take people at their word'."

"He admits two ISIS terrorists [were] allowed into our country. What is the plan to protect our security and reinstate sovereignty over who is in our country?"

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre